Portugal - Between Hammer and Anvil?
Clark, Joseph
Perhaps the saddest aspect of socialist history has been the frequent evocation of a right-wing reaction through extremism on the left. No fiercer battles were fought in pre-Hitler Germany than...
...The Socialists headed by Soares clearly see the dangers from both ends of the political spectrum...
...Since then it seems to be the turn of the extremists on the right...
...The Socialists also demonstrated a shrewd tactical skill in firm opposition to the concept of military supremacy while cooperating with, and seeking to win over, those among the military who were ready to let democracy take over...
...Last year's April elections were a defeat for both the extremists of the left and of the right and revealed that the well-heeled Communists indeed were only a small minority in Portugal...
...No fiercer battles were fought in pre-Hitler Germany than those between Communist Red Front fighters and brownshirted Nazis...
...This development is undoubtedly a tribute to the resilience of the Socialist party, its firmness in opposing totalitarianism of both right and left, as well as its ability to find a common basis for action with Portugal's other democratic parties...
...A fellowtraveling tourist asked, timidly of course, why the Communists had received only 12.5 percent of the vote in the April 25 elections in 1975, held on the first anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the half-century-old dictatorship...
...the prospects are that the extremes will again be routed...
...Now new elections are scheduled to establish a more permanent basis for democratic government...
...Because the workers were not ready for elections," the Communist leader explained...
...But an unholy "dialectic" found Red Front feeding brown shirts...
...Impatient revolutionaries whose dreams usually end up in totalitarian nightmares are always contemptuous of parliamentary elections...
...Moss describes the former as politically aligned with the Salazarist right...
...Communist theories of "social fascism," which designated social democracy as the greatest menace, facilitated Hitler's rise to power...
...The Communists' determination to destroy the democratic process was made amply clear in Portugal when they collaborated with the Maoist, Trotskyist, and Castroite left in an attempted putsch last November...
...To help save both the economy and democracy will require aid from the European Common Market and from the United States...
...That the menace from starboard is real enough was described in considerable detail by Robert Moss, the foreign editor of the London Economist, whose sympathies are with the right and who wrote an amazingly frank article in the December 1975 issue of Harper's...
...In the Prussian plebiscite, Communists and fascists voted together...
...Contemptuous of the socialists and liberals in Portugal, Moss sees a need for deploying military strength to stop the Communists...
...Where can you find that...
...It seems that those favoring such an outcome for the Portuguese revolution among the military Council of the Revolution have prevailed over those who had previously asserted and exercised the dominance of the military over the civilian and popular forces...
...The amazing thing about events in Portugal is the extent to which democratic elections have nevertheless played a decisive part in the course of the revolution...
...The two extreme right-wing groups preparing for this violent overthrow of the Portuguese government are the Portuguese Liberation Army (ELP) and the 130 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP...
...its operational leader is believed to be Barbieri Cardoso, former deputy chief of the Caetano secret police...
...While our country's treasury is opened up to dictatorships and oligarchies the world over, it would be far more useful for America's political (and economic) health to devote the relatively small amount that the Portuguese government is seeking in aid—some $200 million over the next 18 months...
...Thus, an American Communist party leader (in a party distinguished by its subservience to the Soviets) headed one of many "tourist" delegations who had been swarming over Portugal to see a real revolution in action...
...We do have traditions of socialist and labor internationalism in this country and these might well be directed toward supporting the democratic socialists and their allies in Portugal and toward opposing the totalitarians whose enfilading fire comes from both right and left...
...Will the same sorry symbiosis of left-wing and right-wing extremism shatter the hope of a democratic socialist evolution in Portugal...
...The answer may be," Moss writes, "the paramilitary Right...
...They do hold regular "elections" in the Soviet Union, because there the workers are "ready" for elections—they had better be because the Gulag Archipelago beckons those who are not ready...
...Even after those revolutionists who had fought with Castro against Batista but who believed in Castro's prerevolutionary promise of democracy and in early democratic elections were thrown into jails and concentration camps—even then Castro did not trust his people in an election...
...To everyone's surprise, the government under Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, prevailed on the military Council of the Revolution to move with dispatch against the putschists and to remove the far leftist head of security, General Carvalho...
...That he knows whereof he speaks is clear from the personal contacts and hours of interviews he had in Portugal and Spain, "with the leaders of the underground that has been preparing for an eventual civil war in Portugal...
...Both those on the far right and far left view parliamentary democracy as a form of "cretinism...
...The latter Moss describes as professing democracy, but its directorate is largely composed of close supporters of General Antonio de Spinola, who organized a remarkably inept putsch in March 1975...
...The greatest reason for hope that Portugal will achieve a durable democratic society—which Socialist party leader Mario Soares defined as government of the people, by the people, and for the people—is the pact that has been signed by Portugal's military leaders and the five major political parties to end rule by the military and proceed to democratic elections of a representative legislature and of a president...
...That same leader had previously written a book extolling the Castro dictatorship, which had the good sense to eschew elections after the overthrow of Batista...
...Equally important, however, is that the Socialists and the Popular Democrats, who came in second in the April 1975 elections, are addressing themselves to the urgent, immediate need of rebuilding Portugal's shattered economy...
...There are good grounds for optimism and hope...
...Rather than outlining a visionary utopia, they seem to be anxious for transition programs that will succeed in averting economic bankruptcy...
Vol. 23 • April 1976 • No. 2
